Last weekend was a busy weekend if you like the sound of my voice as much as I do. I had two meaty interviews live on the web. What’s that? Did you miss it? Are your ears frowning for my dulcet tones? Have no fear!

On Friday, the delicious folks at The Secret Podcast interviewed me regarding my position as Lead Writer of The Secret World. We talked video games, writers block, video game writing, and more. Learn of my secret origins over at Funcom. You can see that interview HERE.

On Saturday, after an all-nighter of writing, I was interviewed by the wonderful Beth Barnes (also known as DJ Psywarrior). Our main topic of discussion was writing LGBT characters in video games. It’s not a topic of discussion I’d ever thought I’d be specifically invited to talk about, but I’m glad I did. We dug into some weighty stuff, all while killing zombies (a wonderful activity to do while talking serious topics). Beth made me feel very comfortable and welcome and it was easy to spill. That’s her magic. We even discussed fictional characters I’d smooch! Check it out HERE.

I’ll say it once, I’ll cackle it a thousand times: children are far better at processing fear than adults. They are afraid of more things — everything is so big and new — but they deal with the fact that something scared them better than an adult. We just forget that.

Case in point.

Two good friends of mine from back up Chicago way, Val and Allen, were on a family road trip through the south and made a one night stop at my place on Friday. I was eager — EAGER! — to show off my spooky cabin-ish house.

Val and Allen brought their not-quite-four-year-old daughter Penny. Penny liked the skulls and decor. She liked the woods and singing frogs outside. Penny was very keen on seeing our fireplace in action, so I started a fire up, we procured beverages, and gathered front of the cheery roar.

We all listened to some Edgar Allen Poe audio fiction.

Now this is the point. Val and Allen present the world in a very straightforward manner to little Penny. And, with a little reassurance, she takes it all in very well. When she asked me how my adopted cat lost her eye, Val and Allen had me tell the disturbing story to her straight.

And so it was with Poe.

We started with Iggy Pop reading “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Penny was frightened and fascinated by Iggy’s eerie voice. She wanted to know every detail about “the man with the one eye.” We filled her in.

Then Christopher Walken read “The Raven”. Penny sat next to me, again hooked on the spooky cadence, with me giving her the occasional play by play and answering questions. “Oh! The raven is in his house?” “Why does he keep saying that?”

My literary partner was three years and some change, and I don’t remember having as much fun listening to Poe.

The little one went to bed, head full of dismembered bodies, evil eyes, and ill omens. And how did it effect her? The next day she asked her dad to tell her again about the raven and the man with the one eye. I think we formed some good brain wrinkles that night.

When they got back home, Val and Allen asked Penny what her favorite part of the whole vacation was. She said, “The scary house that was not haunted.”

I’m a portrait! Look, look! The wonderfully phantasmagoric-minded Mel Addams made this for me. You can read their story why here.

I’ll break the image down, because I want to illustrate just how much thought and effort went into this. Mel saw that I had some lovely paintings of both Poe and Lovecraft on my wall, by Michael Bielaczyc.

I once talked about the notion of Impostor Syndrome, the insidious doubt that you don’t belong or that some success was not really earned, and how that can pop into anyone’s head, from beginning to novice to the most successful. Mel, in their glorious and kind wisdom, thought a good safeguard would be for me to look up and see my face with a couple of my heroes. They put my face to the same stylized tilt as the Bielaczyc paintings. And they pieced me together from bits of things I’ve provided online over the years.

Years ago, I played around with photo shop to make this image of me.

The one-eyed cat on the left, in the portrait, is my actual one-eyed cat, Raven. I adopted her in Montreal and she has been my home scrivnomancy familiar ever since.

The served hand on the right, is my workplace familiar. I picked it up one Halloween, when I lived in Oslo. It’s been my office mascot ever since (in three countries). And was once a regular character feature on my twitter.

And finally the top hat. It’s actually my leather top hat, purchased from a vendor, many GenCons ago. The eyeball patch I got from Grichels. The hat has taken on a life of its own. Players and readers have gotten to know me by the image. It’s featured in the live twitch dev-stream I do for The Secret World, called The Streaming Ones.

The hat has even taken on surreal digital life within The Secret World game itself. Behold, Nyarlatophat!

Also featured are a coat and vest of mine.

And there you have it. The gift Mel gave me, besides their amazing talent, was an image that I unknowingly got to collaborate on making (by taking pieces of me). That’s a swell gift to someone who likes composing visual things (but with no real technical skill for it). It means the fiddling I did with photoshop or the eyeball I had attached to a hat, and the paraphernalia I surround myself in, all contribute to a sweet image. THANKS, MEL!

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

If the above quote (from HP Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”) is correct, then the dread entity known as Google is destined to “open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

Enter Tomorrow’s Cthulhu. The new anthology features my short story “The Five Hundred Days of Ms. Between” and many more. The book’s blurb says:

Super science. Madness. Transhumanism.

This is the dawn of posthumanity. Some things can’t be unlearned.

Gleaming labs whir with the hum of servers as scientists unravel the secrets of the universe. But as we peel away mysteries, the universe glances back at us. Even now, terrors rise from the Mariana Trench and drift down from the stars. Scientists are disappearing—or worse. Experiments take on minds of their own. Some fight back against the unknown, some give in, some are destroyed, and still others are becoming… more.

You can purchase the Kindle edition of the anthology right now. You can also pre-order soft cover and hardcover editions of the book over at Broken Eye Books. Bellow is teaser of my story. It’s my first crack at a time travel story . . . or is it?

“The Five Hundred Days of Ms. Between” (excerpt)
by Joshua Alan Doetsch

Can’t feel my legs. So I slither along the ground, toward the audient window, humming that song. I hear the wet-velcro rip of the thousand hands rending flesh. I see her through the window. That mocking grin.

The first thing Ms. Between said to me was, “I’m a mad woman with a lab.” The second thing she said was that I could leave at any time with no obligation. The third thing was that there could be no questions—questions would cause her and her offer to evaporate. I believed absolutely in that, so she handed me the murder weapon.

No, wait. That’s not the beginning. I don’t remember exactly when it began—some time after Ms. Between came out of our touchscreens. Everyone has seen her Tech Talk videos and all their terrible wonder. Yet nobody knows where she broadcasts from. No one ever meets Ms. Between.

But I did.

She provided no name, only an address. She said he had done a bad thing. Said he deserved it. I swallowed all of my wriggling questions.

The Nameless Man looked old and kindly. He had one eye and smiled as he slept. Oh how I wish he had tossed with moaning guilt. Everyone sleeps more soundly since the symbionts.

Hesitating, I stood over the Nameless Man’s bed for an hour. With the speed of a carnivorous plant, I took out the dagger. It was carved from bone and coated in lacquer that gave it a greenish hue. I raised the dagger over my head and held it there, squeezing the leather-wrapped handle. Another half hour. My arm ached. I bit my inner cheek and tasted copper. Ms. Between had said I could leave at any time.

No, Val, Lailah pleaded from inside me. You must not do this.

Lailah is my dedicated symbiont.

“Have to,” I rasped.

The Nameless Man startled. His eye opened. I brought the dagger down. I’ve never been good with knives. It took many tries. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said until I was nothing but tears and snot.

“Lailah,” I said when it was over, “now.”

Her coils tightened in my gut. No, Val.Don’t make me. Don’t make me.

“We have to, Lailah. Please.”

I felt her sigh and shiver. Her tendril came out the port in my wrist to snake down into the Nameless Man’s mouth. His symbiont would not live long without him, but it might have stored recent memories in synaptic backup. Through Lailah, I felt its distress. Not a dedicated symbiont, not even a thought interface. How lonely. Just a silent worm. But I don’t judge. I recognize my privilege.

As Lailah devoured the other symbiont, I put the wet dagger into a plastic bag. Ms. Between had handed it to me just before telling me the rules of time travel. It was preposterous. Time travel couldn’t exist.

Joshua Alan Doetsch is a sentient word virus spreading across the collective unconscious through the vector of human language. It has taken on many forms, from short stories, to screenplays, to tabletop roleplaying games. It spreads through print, digital, and audio mediums. It coalesced as the novel Strangeness in the Proportion and shaped itself into an anthropomorphic guise as Lead Writer of The Secret World, a massive multiplayer online computer game. It is made of cuttlefish ink and earworm rhymes, and its fingernails are gleaming fountain pen nibs. You can help spread the infection at joshuadoetsch.com. It’s already too late.

Once upon a time, when I was 16 or 17, I went into a bookstore and opened Vampire the Masquerade (2nd ed.). I’ve never been the same. I’ve done some writing since then. Fast forward. There is a new book available that I’ve contributed to: Lore of the Clans. You can listen to Eddy Webb talk about the development of my two chapters at the following links (the Followers of Set and the Tzimisce respectively).

I’ve done the math. I’ve been reading White Wolf books for longer than I have not been (yikes!). Since the beginning, if you crack open one of those books, you’ll find, in the opening credits, a little Special Thanks section. Contributors and other people involved are given thanks via little nick names. Even if I didn’t know the context of these inside jokes, the section always added a little warmth. So now, all these years later, of all the things I’ve done in this fictional world I’ve played in, I find this little bit tickles my inner teenage fan the most… Getting my own nickname.

Below, is the opening fiction to the Follower’s of Set chapter. Have you heard the legend of Haint Blue?

The Poison Tree

I’m rolling down the outer-roads, somewhere near the Okefenokee Swamp, edging on the static of “Black Snake Moan,” when the phantom signal comes in.

The car radio croons, “Mmm-mmm! Black snake crawlin’ in my room.” Then it says, “Zzzzzzzshhhhhhhhhh!” Then the music. Deep. Bottomless. Filled with the primordial blues of reptile sex. Music that taught people new ways to revel and kill. The music of Haint Blue.

The fuel needle does a heroin shiver over E. Sold my homicide badge to some kids for gas money three truck stops back. It was just the relic of a dead religion. My lost history. The cult killings—the gaudy headlines—crime scene photos—the screaming eyes of cadavers—the dead eyes of interviewees—the tendrils of conspiracy—the warnings from above—my lost vocation—lost marriage—lost. Empty context. An amphetamine stew of memories.

How long had I been chasing Haint Blue?

Static. Lost the music. My knuckles form a row of white tombstones on the wheel. I jerk left. Right. The music crackles back, filling my brainpan with sizzling eel afterbirth. His music.

Haint Blue. The Conjure Man. The walking mythos. Everyone knows somebody who knows somebody who heard his music live. Did a deal with the Devil at a crossroads, they say. His music shows you things, they say. His coffin-shaped guitar case holds secrets. For a trade, he’ll show you wonders. When the six-string priest plays, the dead dance.

In all of the twisted paths of the investigation—from prostitutes to deacons to drug dealers to government officials—the one constant was Haint Blue. Georgia truckers will vomit apocrypha about the rogue radio signal that comes in the late hours, Mesozoic lyrics you can’t quite make out. The sound virus.

No leads. Nothing left. All I had was the music. I don’t know how I know, but I know where to go. All roads lead to Haint Blue.

Just like that, he appears in the cyclopic glare of my last headlight. A dapper holocaust with his coffin guitar case. I’m out of the car, gun drawn. I aim for his heart. Gators bellow and eyes gleam in the dark off the road. Under the brim of his hat, Haint Blue smiles at me the way mushroom clouds smile at the sun. I drop the gun. Bullets are just an unnecessary rudeness.

All the terrible things I saw to find him, the things I did, just rungs down the ladder. Every clue teasing the ultimate secrets of the cosmos, like humming a song you can’t quite remember.

“More,” I say through the tears, “please show me more.”

He nods. His pale blue tie glows in the black, like a river of souls dribbling down his chin to his belt. He offers me a straight razor. I cut along, not across.

Frogs croak prayers to the void. The smell of rotting peat. The feverish crossroad pavement.

When did I lay down? That’s when I notice the bottle trees—small, dead trees with blue bottles stuck on the ends of the bare branches. Used to see them in yards, when I was a kid. Mama’d say some hoodoo about the bottles trapping roaming night spirits until the morning light destroyed them. The wind blows piping music through the stained glass branches.

A cold palm presses my mouth. Baptism tastes like unlucky pennies. “See you on the other side of Duat,” Haint whispers like a kindly psychopomp. Then he strangles his six strings down to revenant whale groans. He sings, but I can’t catch all the words.

“…I was angry with my foe—I told it not, my wrath did grow—and I watered it in fears—night and morning with my tears—and I sunned it with smiles—and with soft deceitful wiles—and it grew both day and night—till it bore an apple bright…”

The gators become crocodiles. The sky opens wide, showing the convoluted pantheon that is its teeth. The godmonster menagerie—all perched in the branches of the Poison Tree of Souls. Before the river of death carries me away, I hear the breaking of blue glass. Haint cackles, “Come out! Come out! Meet your new sibling.” Funny thing, as the bottles break, the mad piping does not quiet. It grows louder.

Finn remembers. The dark woods. The chair of bone and horn. He sat on Santa’s cold lap. The blue-black skin. Moon-glow eyes. The clotted beard. That distended belly that shook like things writhing in jelly.

That fact has nothing to do with the rest of this post. Books! Specifically, my novel! I recently sold a small box of them I stumbled upon, and they sold fast. In fact some people who contacted me were not able to get one. So, I’m going to do a second round of signed copies of my novel, Strangeness in the Proportion.

You too will smile as big as this happy reader…

What do you get?

A physical copy of the book! All three dimensions (plus a bonus dimension). Look at that creepy cover by Christopher Shy.

Autographed, with anything else you’d like scrawled in it.

A genuine toe tag bookmark (never mind how I got them!).

The price (which includes shipping) is $25 to ship to the US and $45 to other countries (sorry, shipping nailed me last round). You can also buy the book cheaper and in electronic format (but sans signature and toe tag) at the link above.

I’ll accept payments through Paypal. If interested, email me at scrivnomancer@gmail.com (that’s not my paypal address, email me first) for details. I’ll get a shipment of the books in October, which means I should be able to have shipped to people before Halloween (a perfect time to read it!).

It’s a time of transition. A little lull. I’m rearranging my writing space, both physical and virtual. Retooling. Getting ready for future projects. I finally cleaned up and updated my Written Works page.

So I figure it’s a good time to dust off my wares and review what’s come before. Starting today, every day, I’ll set out a juicy sample, an excerpt and some commentary for each of my published and available works. Care to time travel with me via spilled ink?

Our first story takes us back to the beginning, 2007 (and some years prior), back to Twilight Tales.

Twilight Tales was weekly genre reading series in Chicago. Every Monday, area writers gathered in the warm, dim light of the Red Lion pub to read their genre fiction to the gathered audience. It was a motley collection, all ages, all experience levels. A lot of writers shared their wisdom or cut their teeth here. The Red Lion (a British-style pub) was itself a character. Old and creaking, with a splendid beer garden with a tree, our Yggdrasil, growing impossibly out of all the buildings. It was on more than one haunted tour. Hell, this is the place that Captain America beat the crap out of Giant-Man/Ant-man. Sadly, the Red Lion was eventually torn down. I here tell it has since risen again in a new incarnation (though I haven’t been there yet).

Twilight Tales was where I honed my words. Reading to a live audiences teaches you storytelling lessons you don’t learn in any other way. I met fantastic people. I heard wonderfully bizarre stories. It was just the right place, the right time, and the right mix of folk. It was my sandbox and playground, and I miss it fiercely.

Twilight Tales takes us to The Book of Dead Things. Published by Twilight Tales Press, I had submitted a story to it (I forget what) and it was rejected. Later on, I read a different story at the open mic. Tina Jens (one of the editors) liked it so much she asked to include it.

Success! “Blood, Snow, and Sparrows” was my first professional sale in print. I wrote it in a grad school class. I’m looking at it now. This goes back far enough that I can cringe at parts and think Ugh…did I make that sentence? But we have to start somewhere. And it did earn me one of my favorite comments:

Joshua Alan Doetsch is not good. Joshua Alan Doetsch is darkly transcendent. It was so amazing it was like Ray Bradbury got high and started listening to Nine Inch Nails and decided to write about ‘the
Crow’.

Without further delay, here are the first few paragraphs (and a little mood music by way of the Psuedopod intro tune).

Blood, Snow, and Sparrows (an excerpt)

Desdemona used to trace the stars with her finger, connecting the dots, naming her own constellations.

I call upon her name.

Desdemona.

I call her name when I want to remember.

Desdemona—who gave me thirty-one birthdays when I had none. Desdemona—who laughed and made snow angels on rooftops because the snow there was cleanest, the closest to Heaven. Desdemona—who made an angel of snow and blood in the dirty street on the day I lost her.

I remember this, now, as Zeek struggles in my arms, anger and fear evacuating his body in crimson spurts, and my smile dislocates my jaw. Zeek with the shroud-eye, one eye glaucoma-clouded, said it was his evil eye, said he could hex a body with a stare, cast a pestilence. But, see, I knew better. I knew it was Zeek’s dirty needles that killed the kids. And the night collapses with primate shrieks, as Zeek tries to lift his bloody gun and…

Freeze. Too far. Backtrack.

Once upon a time, Desdemona Mercer giggled in frustration and joy and chucked her astronomy textbook off the roof we made love on. She connected the dots and named her own constellations, and when the winter wind came, we folded in on one another, seeing how close we could get in my sleeping bag. We spent hours seeing how close we could get.

Now, I stare in the cracked mirror, and I connect the track marks on my body, form constellations with them. I name each one. But then the memories cut too deep, and I give up on the angry stars burning in a pale Milky Way of collapsed veins, and I plunge the needle behind my eye and inject.

I count the bullets—one, two, three—and wonder how many good deeds it’ll take.